Threads
by Laurie M
Summary: For a LiveJournal prompt: Ava reflects on Boyd's propensity for waistcoats.


_**Disclaimer: **Justified _ain't mine. Sadly. Comments welcome.

_**Author Note:**_This was written for **norgbelulah**'s excellent _Summer In Harlan _fic meme at LiveJournal. The prompt for this story, from **Red Molly**, was: Ava, Boyd's propensity for waistcoats.

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><p><em><strong>Threads<strong>_

She had asked him once about the waistcoats and he had told her that he had tried one on once and he had liked the feel. It had fit.

Something about that - what he had said, the way he had said it - had been familiar but she couldn't quite place it and in the end she had dismissed it.

The men of Harlan were not known for their sartorial elegance. Anyone in a suit was viewed with suspicion as a matter of principle. They were authority, they were the lawmen, they were the man, they were not one of them.

But this, perhaps, is something in between. Not authority but it is authoritative.

Sometimes she wonders if he does it deliberately, wearing it as a way of commanding respect in the same way that she dons her red high-heels as a kind of armour. He is capable, more than capable, of that kind of manipulation but when she thinks about it she decides that it probably isn't that at all.

She likes the feel of her shoes. She likes them just for her. She likes the way they look and the inches they add to her height and the way they mould to her feet. They suit her. They tell the world who she is, or at least who she would like to be.

_(At home she doesn't she need them, not _in_ the house, not now, because now she is just her when she is there, the way it is supposed to be._)

And she thinks that maybe it's the same for him. He just likes it. Likes the feel. And it suits him, the same way the oddly old-fashioned heavy-rimmed glasses he wears at times suit him.

The waistcoats remind her of a painting she saw once, a man and his wife and their house in the background. Something settled and steady and rooted.

Except that they are both younger than the couple in the painting and she certainly feels a lot happier than the old woman looks. And, at that, she looks happier, when she sees herself in the mirror. The lines of her face are more resolute but that doesn't make her look older, it makes her-

It makes her look more herself, she thinks.

Lights flare across through the window and she smiles to herself, tying off the last knot. By the time she catches the faint squeak of the porch floor-boards under his light tread and the screen door opens, she has shaken out the fabric and she turns in the chair by her sewing machine and smiles.

'Perfect timing,' she says. He takes a moment on the threshold, shaking off the day and the outside before he approaches her and she turns her face up to his. His lips brush hers, linger there.

'Always happy to oblige,' he murmurs.

She laughs. 'And don't I know it.' She runs her fingers along his jaw, feeling the hard lines of bone beneath the skin. 'But that's not what I meant. Take your jacket off.'

His eyebrows go up, amused, but he makes no comment. He shrugs off his jacket and stands, eyes watchful and curious as she circles behind him.

'Now, try this on.'

She slides it up his arms, settles it across his shoulders, walks around him, tweaking the material, pulling off loose threads. Dark, like most of his clothes, not black, but a deep charcoal, broken by the faintest of fine, pale stripes. She had worked most of it by hand, making the stitches as small as possible. The fabric has a sheen to it, soft under the lamplight and she liked the feel of it between her fingers, the contrast between that and the silky backing. She fastens the buttons, smoothes her hands down the wall of his chest and looks at him expectantly.

He stares at where her hands rest and blinks.

'It's a waistcoat,' she says, and bites the inside of her lip.

'I can see that.' His voice sounds oddly remote. When his head lifts his eyes glitter wildly and he places his hands over hers.

'No-one's ever- I don't-' He shakes his head, takes a breath and his thumbs stroke the backs of her hands. 'Thank you.'

She shrugs awkwardly, taking pleasure in his response; but the intensity pierces her, shards of longing and loss and sadness at the edges. 'It's nothing,' she says, and hears her voice break.

He raises one of her hands to his lips, holds it there for a long time. His fingers are strong and they wrap around hers, tight. 'Oh, Ava; it's everything.'


End file.
